Our Historic Unionization Election

Within the brief span of a year, from Spring 2015 to Fall 2015, the Barnard contingent faculty has gone from talking about the need for a union to voting one into place. The early organizers affiliated with UAW Local 2110 because of its deep roots in the community: Local 2110 already represented Barnard support staff, Columbia support staff, Columbia graduate student workers, and NYU graduate student workers, among many others.

Spring 2015: A core group of faculty organizers fanned out across campus and held scores of one-on-one and small group meetings with our colleagues. Realizing that the desire for a union was strong, we launched a card drive in the final weeks of that semester, quickly amassing confidential signatures from a supermajority of the contingent faculty, representing all ranks and nearly all departments.